But Not Forever Read online

  I leaned my back into the warmth of his chest and felt . . . so right. If there were no mistakes, then it was meant to be that I sat right there in Tor’s arms on top of this starlit mountain. And it was meant to be that he would think about all that was said when this night ended and come to believe the unbelievable.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Emma

  2015

  Emma counted and stacked bills on top of each other and piled the coins that spilled across the coffee table. Most of the money came from what remained of Evan’s birthday gift from his grandpa. The rest, babysitting money from Lia, and lawn mowing money from Rapp, completed their loot. The other members of Team Switch were penniless. Even with a discount, seeing a psychic would cost close to seventy-five dollars.

  Niki lifted her face to the ceiling as Rapp’s uncle ambled around in the kitchen above their heads. “It’s time to bring him in.”

  “Will he believe us, Rapp? He won’t freak out, right?” asked Jules.

  “No, he won’t freak out, except that we didn’t talk to him sooner.” Rapp thumped up the wooden stairs. Muffled voices reached down to them for ten long minutes and then two sets of footsteps pounded back downstairs.

  Jack Loken dropped onto the couch between Niki and Jules. Thick dark hair, woven with gray, fanned out down his back from a leather tie at the base of his neck, and a tiny gold hoop glinted from his ear. “Which one of you is Emma?”

  She stood up. “It is I, sir.”

  Evan handed him the photo. “We’re pretty sure that’s Sonnet. My sister.”

  Rapp’s uncle scanned back and forth from the photo to Emma like Professor Kapoor before him. “I remember you. You were the one who slept all the way home from the Monte Cristo picnic in the back of my van. Well, Emma, you’ve journeyed a long way to us here in Seattle. No wonder you were conked out.”

  He glanced around at the rest of them, weighing their comprehension and commitment. “Do you guys understand how critical this is?”

  “Oh yeah, we understand it,” said Evan.

  “I just called a good friend of mine. She’s a world-renowned intuitive psychic who just happens to live on Vashon Island. She’ll see you this afternoon. We can make the one o’clock Fauntleroy Ferry if we leave now. And bring something of Sonnet’s that hasn’t been worn by Emma . . . like a sweatshirt or sweater.”

  “World-renowned? She sounds expensive, Mister Loken.” Niki nodded at the pile of money. “Sixty-one dollars and some change is all we have.”

  “Keko is gratis. She gets how critical this is, too. And you can all call me Uncle Jack. I’m not much of a ‘mister’—” He turned to Emma. “And definitely not a ‘sir.’”

  “You are a noble man to come to my assistance, Uncle Jack,” said Emma.

  “There’s that. But mostly I’m an out-of-school-for the-summer teacher angling for something to do,” he said, winking at her. “So, let me thank you.”

  “IT’S a sign!” Uncle Jack could hardly contain his excitement. He bobbed and pointed, his arms wigwagging around like a windmill. Off to the side of the dipping and rolling ferry, two mammoth black fish with spots of white raced beside us through their watery kingdom. Lined up against the railing, Team Switch howled and clapped.

  “Woo-hoo!” Lia twirled Emma around in a circle. “Having an orca whale follow us is good luck. Having two orcas follow is double luck. Our mission is now stamped in the heavens.”

  Tar-dripped wooden piers grew larger. A blast of horn sent seagulls crying and flapping in a circle above their heads. The black-and-white twins ducked under the waves and disappeared into the dark waters of Puget Sound.

  Team Switch ran down the narrow metal staircase to the rows of cars as blustery gusts turned their hair into whirlwinds. They folded back into the white van, one after the other. Uncle Jack steered off the ferry onto dry land, the vehicle chugging up the incline on a two-lane road leading to the psychic’s Vashon Island home.

  Good luck. A sign. Emma held on tight to the mystical message.

  LONG strings of turquoise and silver beads hung from Keko Kim’s neck and swayed and clicked as she walked across the stone floor in bare feet to greet them. Her multi-colored orange, magenta, and black hair was piled high like a volcano on top of her head, and two gold enameled sticks pointed out from the loose knot that somehow kept the messy mound in place.

  Keko smiled at Emma, but spoke to the rest of them. “You can cool your heels out on the patio and wait for us. This won’t take long. I want to sit with Emma. I feel strongly that the time to be with her is right now.” She caught Emma’s hand and carted her away from Lia.

  Lia moved with them. “I’ll go with her—”

  “No, it’s better if it’s just us.” Keko made a second attempt at separating them. “Don’t worry. I’ll find you and let you know what we discover.”

  “Well . . . Okay.” Lia handed over Sonnet’s sweater and stood rooted to the same spot as Keko walked Emma down the corridor. Emma waved back to her as she entered a small room. Keko closed the door, invited Emma to sit on a couch, and held the sweater, shutting her eyes.

  Lia had wanted to bring Sonnet’s old blue sweatshirt, but Emma had insisted on the pink-and-white cardigan. For Emma, her color choice spoke of home. Her room. The color of the walls and the pretty, striped dress hanging in the wardrobe. A brass scale across time with both plates dangling at the same level. The coincidence of harmony.

  Another sign, she hoped. Another good luck signal to the heavens.

  KEKO called them in from the patio. “Who wants to help make lunch? We’ll take it down to the beach and talk there.”

  “Me!” Like a red-furred cat, Evan leapt to Keko’s side and wrangled a package of bread from her hands. If it had to do with food, Evan was a committed warrior.

  Team Switch carried sandwiches, thin crispy potatoes, and drinks in metal cans down the sandy path. They sat with their backs against an immense piece of bleached driftwood, dried seaweed crunching at their feet. Seagulls danced in the marine wind above their heads, positioning themselves to dive for the bits of bread Rapp tossed up into the sky. They ate in silence and watched as waves swooshed against the shore.

  Keko finished her sandwich and threw the last of her crust up in the air for the brazen birds. “So, I’m glad you came to me. I think I can be of help in your quest. Monte Cristo is the site where Emma and Sonnet traded places, and Monte Cristo is where you must return with Emma to send her home. I feel strongly that Sonnet is doing well and is searching hard for clues to her own return and maybe leaving clues for you. In fact, I seemed to get a double reading. Two direct streams of consciousness at the same time. One was clearly Emma’s. The other, Sonnet’s. As if the two people were one—split into two locations. Extremely interesting. And a first for me.”

  “Leaving clues? In Monte Cristo?” Jules brightened.

  “Yes. I must tell you if you decide to pursue this, it’ll be difficult.”

  Rapp sat up straight and flipped his hat sideways. “We can handle difficult. Uncle Jack, can you take us on an emergency camping trip to Monte Cristo?”

  “I was just going to suggest it. It sounds like we need to get back up the mountain pronto, Keko.”

  “Yes, this can’t wait. If Sonnet finds a way to get back while Emma is still here . . .” A look passed between them. “Well, let’s just say we can’t let that happen. How does tomorrow sound? I can be at your house in the late morning, Jack. We’ll all ride up the mountain together.”

  Emma heard the tightness in their throats. She understood they were trying to give the moment a sense of levity. Calling it difficult instead of dangerous did not change the reality of her situation. Professor Kapoor had noted the danger as being “critical” and it appeared Uncle Jack and Keko knew it to be critical, too.

  Together they would sit now in the sand and make a plan to return her to her world. She would steel herself for whatever came. Like the tide, mysteriously orchestrating the dark water in
front of her, Emma’s stretch of time in this glorious place seemed to be ebbing away.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sonnet

  1895

  Tor had called me “Sonnet,” and in this way, I knew he had finally come to believe the unbelievable. He was now a willing participant in our secret rendezvous, demanded by me in my mounting desperation as the hours slid closer to Sunday.

  With Kerry at my side, I moved the lace curtain away from the glass and peered out as Maxwell drove the carriage away. Thorn and the boys were off to the Miller home for another Victorian-style playdate, and with Kerry feigning sickness as an excuse not to go, Tor, Maxwell, Kerry, and I had a short window of time to meet and make a plan.

  Kerry looked at the clock on the nightstand. “Forty minutes until Maxwell returns.”

  I bounced onto Emma’s bed and grabbed Kerry’s wrist, pulling her down next to me. “Hey, you!”

  “Hay is for horses,” Kerry laughed.

  “Not in my world.” I giggled, feeling almost normal. How I loved this funny girl, my lifeline to sanity. We lounged around, talking and talking, and laughed and howled, as if we were best friends, while we waited for Maxwell and Tor to join us in the barn.

  WE were back at the window. Tor came down the slope and crossed the side meadow with his leather tool bag hung casually over his shoulder. We watched as he wound through the boys’ abandoned toys and ducked through the barn’s big opening to join Maxwell, who had clattered back with the empty carriage minutes before.

  Kerry left the bedroom.

  I counted to sixty and then tiptoed down the staircase and out the front door. I joined my friends in a back corner of the barn behind the horse stalls. Bales of straw hid us, and hens and their yellow, fluffy babies clucked and scratched around at our feet. A cow gawked and mooed, unsure why a bunch of humans had moved in on her territory.

  “Kerry heard them talking,” I whispered, as soon as I felt sure we were alone. “John is going to take me for the long carriage ride to Everett, without the rest of the family. We’re leaving Monte Cristo Sunday morning and will stay the night at a hotel. The train leaves Everett Station Monday at noon.”

  “The Ice Caves Fair starts Friday night and continues through Sunday,” said Tor. “If nothing else, the Sweetwine family will go on Saturday. That will be the big day. You can’t come back to the house that evening. We’ll have to make you disappear from the fair.”

  “She surely must be in disguise,” said Kerry, running her eyes over my hair and down my fancy lace and linen dress. “Everyone in town knows Emma.”

  Like Kerry, Maxwell checked me out from my head to my toes. “Would you be opposed to wearing men’s clothing?”

  “I would give anything to take off this dress and put on men’s clothes.”

  “I have an idea then.”

  We stood close in the hay and came up with a plan. A simple plan we could pull off. With a grateful sigh, I felt the dark cloud lift off my shoulders.

  I smiled at Kerry and Maxwell and took a big breath. “I have one more request. When it’s just us, will you please call me Sonnet like Tor does? You are my friends, my only family here. I don’t think of you as anything less.”

  I watched a look pass between them. Years of servitude, raising its ugly head.

  Kerry finally spoke. “Calling one’s superior by their first name is not done here. Whether Emma or Sonnet, your station is above ours.”

  “Have I just been a placeholder for Emma then? After all this time of knowing who I really am? We just hung out, Kerry! That’s all I want. You have to understand. Where I come from, we would all be friends. We would all be family. There would be no reason for us not to be. That’s my world.”

  “But not their world. You make this awkward for them,” said Tor.

  “I’m not Emma, and this isn’t my house, and they’re not my servants. This is something I want, Tor, from the bottom of my heart. I need family right now. Not hired help.”

  How could I make them understand? How could I explain how important this was to me? “In my art class last year, we studied painters. My favorite was one called Hopper. Our teacher talked about how his work portrayed loneliness. I remember really liking his paintings but not understanding them. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t conjure up the lonely feelings for Hopper’s work like some of my classmates did. But I understand now. I understand loneliness. I really don’t know what I would have done, trapped here in this house with that woman, without you, Kerry.”

  I turned to Maxwell. “And if—when—Emma comes back, she’ll have known another way to live, and she’ll need your help and friendship, too. You can be her secret family. Like I’m asking you to be mine. I don’t want to be your ‘miss’ anymore. Please. Call me Sonnet.”

  Maxwell shoved his hands in his pockets and dropped his head to the little chicks pecking around his boots. He watched the mother hen chase after them for a moment, his always-sunny face gradually streaked in waves of grief. “I might understand this Hopper’s paintings. I have ached for my parents for as long as I can remember. Even with all of Grandfather’s devotion, I have had a lonely hole in my heart, a place as sad as the roiling river that took them away. In all honesty, Kerry might understand being left alone, too.”

  “Yes, I understand loneliness, certainly.”

  “Then let me be Sonnet when no one can hear.”

  Kerry slowly nodded. “Family. Being together and speaking on any topic without fear, as we have already done. Connecting without formality. It signifies how we feel about each other, not our stations, correct? As if you were my wee sister from Ireland, come to visit.”

  “Yes, all of that. Right! You’re totally getting it.”

  “I haven’t forgotten your blackberry-stained hands and face the first time we met in the forest,” said Maxwell. “I think you ate as many berries that day as found their way into your tin pail. You will be my sister, Sonnet, lover of blackberries. Just as I am fond of them, a sister might be as well. If I had a sister.”

  I laughed, my heart almost bursting in my chest. They had given me a family and made this the best day of my life. “I am sister, then, to you both. This means everything to me. Thank you.”

  Tor took my hand and lifted it to his mouth. He kissed it. “Our Sonnet, then. Our family. You are very persuasive.”

  We parted ways one by one and snuck back out of the barn, back to the business of the day. I was the last to leave. I stayed in the shadows for a moment longer, my heart still big, and watched Tor stride up the hill, away from me, back to his construction site.

  The domino ring felt smooth between my fingers as I made my way up the grand staircase to my gilded cage. I raised it to my nose, imagining the smell of home. Taking a chance, I would wear it for just a little while today. Put it on my finger where I could see it. A treat.

  I peeled off my layers of clothes, able to finally breathe in just Emma’s chemise and knickers. I reached between the mattresses and wriggled out my leather and silver bracelet and put that on, too.

  Settling down on the brass bed, I crossed my arms above my heart and stared at the spot on my hand where Tor had just kissed it. The pink-and-white bedroom would be Emma’s again as soon as we found a way to switch places. Unless she got shipped off to Baltimore, she would live in it, sneaking around and seeing her boyfriend when she could. The promise of a life with Tor would be the only thing that would keep her sane in this house with her crazy mother. I was happy she would have that. I couldn’t be jealous. I couldn’t want to go back and want to have him, too.

  I just couldn’t.

  And, anyway, he was hers.

  Stuck here until I found my way home, I would be a wee blackberry sister come to visit. Nothing else.

  A sigh swept out of me from somewhere I didn’t know existed. Out-of-kilter real life was hard. Emma’s leather-bound copy of Little Women sat on the bedside table where I’d put it earlier. I would lose myself in something imaginary.

  I
turned to page 102, where I’d left off earlier that morning. Things were just starting to get good. Skating furiously down the frozen river after Jo and Laurie, Amy had fallen through the ice. . . .

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Emma

  2015

  Uncle Vince frowned at Emma as he flicked egg shells into the kitchen sink. He was leaning against the counter, as seemed to be the dining habit of the entire household, eating hardboiled eggs and gulping coffee before he left for his prominent position at a big Seattle company that sold books and other things.

  “I thought you didn’t really like Monte Cristo, Sonnet. Why this sudden interest to go back up the mountain and camp?” He turned to Lia. “I wanted to take you all to Water Waves Park tomorrow after work. I thought that might be fun in this heat.”

  “It turns out Sonnet actually loves Monte Cristo, Dad. And the river is so fun to swim in, we thought we’d beat the heat that way. Right, Sonnet?”

  “Yeah, I love swimming in the river, Uncle Vince.”

  “We might find gold, Dad.” Lia graced her father with a beguiling smile.

  Aunt Kate wiped at a few bits of wayward shells and toast crumbs and then hopped up on the counter as if she were the same age as her daughters. If Emma ever caught her mother doing that in their kitchen, she would surely sink to the ground with a fatal heart attack. But being as it was Aunt Kate, Emma found she only adored her more.

  “Why don’t you guys wait until Friday when we can all go?” Aunt Kate asked, swinging her bare legs. She put a piece of jam-smeared toast into her mouth.